diet // Category

Everybody wants extreme weight loss in as short a time as possible, yet very few people see these results last much longer then their 2 week summer holiday.

I’m sure many people know the situation, you start a 6 week diet in the hope of losing weight for holiday, Christmas, birthday etc. So you start an extreme diet and end up cutting down on your calories by more than half, you’re currently consuming 2000 calories and you know about the guidelines about cutting down by 500 calories a day is ideal weight loss, but surely the more calories you cut down the better results will be?

Of course dropping more calories will result in greater ‘weight’ loss but why don’t the experts advise cutting calories down to lower and lower calories?

This is because the ‘weight’ lost during these diets causes us to be further from our true goals, and leads us to a dangerous recoil back to obesity.

What the heck am I talking about?

First let me paint the situation for you…

You want to lose weight so you weigh yourself…

Say the weight comes in at 14st 4lbs (91kg)

But lets look even deeper…

That’s 2.5st (16kg) body fat

11.5st on lean active tissue

Then we start the 1000 calorie diet…

and we see great results losing 5lb in the first week, 4lb in the 2nd week and 3lbs for the remaining 3 weeks, we achieve our goal and lose an incredible 21lbs

After 6 weeks we now weigh 12st 11lbs (81kg)

But when we look deeper and break down what we’ve lost the story changes…

The 21lb weight loss breaks down like this…

9.5lbs (4.3kg) from body fat

11.5lbs (5kg) from lean active tissue.

Less than half of our weight has come from fat, with more coming from lean active tissue such as muscle. We’re actually unhealthier, less fit, weaker and less active.

Our metabolism has gone done, our activity levels have reduced and we barely move around anymore. We’re primed and ready for our weight to spring back up and more when our diet returns to what it was before the diet.

This is why more than 95% of people fail to achieve their goals for any length of time.

What can we do to stop the trend?

We need to play a different game. We need to LOSE FAT / NOT WEIGHT, Burn The Fat, Not Starve The Body.

This is where Protein and Weight Training are so important. By increasing protein we preserve muscle and avoid the body breaking it down, by weight training we’re able to burn the fat and increase our active tissue to burn MORE calories. We need to cut the food down little by little so that we don’t end up burning the wrong kind of weight. By cutting down by 500 calories or so, we’re not wasting time, we’re succeeding in the long run. Imagine if you followed the REAL experts (who have exercise science degrees, who have spent over 10 years learning and educating with SCIENCE and not hearsay) advice the first time instead of what the popular diets suggested. Clearly the popular diets don’t work for the long run if ultimately we’re going backwards over the years.

Most weightloss diets require extreme sacrifices and giving up of many “bad” foods:

Set yourself a long term goal (next summer)

No Sugar

No Carbs

No Alcohol

Low Fat

Amongst many other suggestions to give up on. If you’re cutting things out with no date set for them to be re-introduced then you’re going to binge and end up feeling guilty for having the ‘bad’ foods which then leads to giving up altogether and leaving you feeling like you’ve failed.

In my opinion this is no way to live and certainly no way to lose weight or diet. Cutting so many foods out of your diet – that you like and enjoy – is never a recipe for successful weight loss.

Set yourself up to WIN.

Instead of cutting out foods, feeling bad for having a set-back at the weekends set yourself accountable with smaller easier to manage tasks such as allowing yourself these foods in small quantities once per day – keeping yourself accountable means that you’re unlikely to over-eat these foods by having a friend or coach keeping you on track and making sure you’re doing the things you need to achieve your goals.

Focus on ONE thing.

By focusing on ONE aspect instead of trying to change everything at once means that we can manage it easier and are more likely to succeed. In my experience changing portion sizes has lead to the biggest improvements as most peoples plates are too large leading to eating more calories than they need. So changing your portion sizes could be the perfect start to your new healthy weight loss plan.

This often see’s a reduction in the amount of calories our clients eat and provides fantastic results within the first week.

Look Long Term

Many people starting a diet will want to lose 2 stone in 3 weeks before a holiday. Sorry to break it to you but this rarely happens, on the occasions it does, it leads to a miserable few weeks leading up to your holiday followed by an almost immediate bulge and regain of weight within days of eating on holiday.

Think about how many times people have tried this approach, only to drastically yo-yo diet and this is why 95% of people who diet weigh more 2 years after the diet than BEFORE they started the diet itself.

Instead give yourself time to succeed, by looking longer term you give yourself time to really make some changes. As with any successful plan it starts with a long term plan that is broken down into smaller more manageable chunks of 6-12 weeks. This way you’ll see continuous changes starting to appear within the first few weeks and then by the time you get to your holiday you’ll be in amazing shape and will be able to look that way throughout the whole holiday.

There are countless of weight loss diets out there, it is in fact a multi-BILLION-dollar industry. Yet with so many different diets and “authority” figures sell thing their diets it can be confusing to us in trying to find the perfect weight loss diet that’s best for us. So how do we find the perfect weightloss diet for our lifestyle and goals.

Low Carb

Low Fat

Paleo

IIFYM

Atkins

Mediterranean

Slimming World

WeightWatchers

Juice Diet

Vegetarian

This never ending list.

Diets can be confusing, yet NONE of these are the perfect diet for you. They all provide well meaning guidelines to follow, yet offer very little in terms of structuring them around your lifestyle, you should not need to change your lifestyle to it the diet in. If you’re a busy mum working at a high level you’re going to be struggling for time so spending a ton of time preparing foods, weighing your chicken to count your macro’s probably isn’t the right plan for you, yet juicing your meals leaves you feeling tired and grouchy – not to mention the health concerns with not ‘eating meals’. There are very few diets that factor in work stress, time restraints, hungry children or even family meals (anything that requires weighing your foods to count calories, macronutrients etc.).

The Perfect diets needs to work around YOUR lifestyle and encourage family time together, not you trying to adjust your life to the diet, that will only lead to frustration and short term changes. It will also not only get you the weight loss results you’re after, but leave you feeling energised, vibrant and confident. The perfect diet will provide countless health benefits and reduce your stress levels by working in your environment.

Why the typical diet doesn’t work?

The more traditional method of cutting our or limiting certain food types, we end up reducing our food options and this means we “should” end up eating less food as a result. The average person will stick to around 25 food types (chicken, fish, certain vegetables and fruits alongside plenty of junk foods such as chocolate, sweets and calories in drinks). The problems comes when reducing our carbs, or fats actually reduces our nutrients and/or leads to replacing them with other foods. Through advising to reduce certain foods types these diets fail to identify the true cause of your weight loss – reduced food intake – instead

focusing on one aspect that they say is causing weight gain. The

re are many research studies and evidence supporting the fact is not reduced carbs, fats or any food type that causes weight loss, but reducing food intake is actually the magic potion in these diets and why sometimes they succeed, more often they fail because we replace the food types with more of the others.

Counting Calories – Limiting Food Intake

This is where counting calories comes into play as a diet option however, does this fit in with your lifestyle and belief patterns? If you’re rushed for time and want to eat with the family (counting calories requires weighing food uncooked) then this is going to impact for life. Therefore although you may start with the best intentions ultimately these plans are often short term and highly stressed.

What is The Perfect Diet

The perfect diet is different for each and every person and it doesn’t have a ‘name’.

We strongly believe small adjustments are required over the long term to succeed. This is why We provide empowering methods to allow you to make the right choices in situations where you’re having to choose what foods to eat. Through providing information, recipes and guidelines for our clients to make the best choices for them in any situation. We feel that by empowering our clients with the tools to not only make the right choices when rushed around and stressed but also at home with the family.

Social Factors

These play a major role in the success of our diet. If your program limits social aspects such as meals out, parties (consuming alcohol or BBQ’s) then these diets will be useless, unless we live the life of a hermit. Therefore we need to take these factors into consideration when looking at the adjustments we can make to our diet to allow us to succeed, many diets fail to do this.

Working With Your Strengths

This simply means that the perfect diet will help us win with our goals, social aspects and our overall health. We provide tips and guides for eating out such as steak, chicken and fish to help with protein and healthy fats, limiting un-necessary calories through sauces, and having starters instead of desserts to help improve the calorie balance and drinking low (or zero) calorie drinks alongside your meals to help you feel satiated. These mean that we can continue doing what we enjoy and socialising without the need to stress or worry about putting on weight, or falling off the weight loss wagon.

The perfect diet is not a quick fix option that you’ll likely give up quicker than seeing any results but a diet that provides the nutrients, energy and balance that we need in life to achieve our goals and enjoy our lifestyle. Therefore the perfect diet is completely individual and always changing as our lives do.

If you want to maximise your health, weight loss, performance and energy levels here’s a list things you can do to maximise your diet.

> Portion Control – We like to use our hand size as our guide but you can use anything you want to quickly determine the size of your portions

They say you should Start With Why…

But why?

Most of the time we decide that we want to lose weight, tone up or get lean and strong. We even know the weight we want to lose, or the dress size we want to get into.

But less often we know exactly the reason why we want to achieve these goals… we’ll often come up with ‘surface’ level reasons such as I’m tired of being overweight, i want to lose weight because I want to look better for our summer holiday etc.

Then we struggle to get results and wonder why we yo-yo our weight, why we don’t stick with a program long enough to get the results we wanted in 3 weeks.

Our deeper level ‘Why’ could be the missing piece of the puzzle.

We often forget to establish the REAL reason “WHY” we want these goals.

Most of us believe it will make us happy, much like winning the lottery will make people happy, yet those who have achieved these goals often find it is not enough to make us happy… we just renew our goals and continue to reach for more. I believe the reason why could be the missing piece of the puzzle to achieving and keeping our goals.

But HOW do we find our reason why?

I ask ALL of our clients why they want to achieve their goals and why they are going to do what’s need to achieve their goals.

Yet all-too-often we get surface level responses such as “i want to lose weight” or I want to feel better” but we need to go deeper to really understand why. Finding the deeper level of why will allow us to carry on when times get tough such as rainy days, or feeling a little tired and things start to take over, when this happens, most people will give up without any result or even worse, just short of seeing the results they want to get. Even if the task was as easy as just turning up each day – regardless of the work most people will fail to turn up each day if their reason why isn’t big enough. We need to lead our action to our goals, not be lead by our actions away from our goals. I can tell that you’re not the type of person who wants to stay where you are, by reading this far you want results and want to delve deeper into your why.

You want to improve and get more from your life, whether that’s weightloss, shape, or all of these factors, you want more than the ordinary person.

It can sometimes be difficult to find the ‘real’ reason why we want to lose weight or why we want to be leaner, fitter & stronger. But it doesn’t have to be difficult we just need to go 7 levels deep.

I’ve tried this many times with clients and even family members and each time it’s worked an absolute treat each time.

So what does it actually mean?

First of all we set our goal, then each level develops based on the previous answer such as

Goal: I want to lose get in shape…

Why… I want to lose weight because… etc

Most of our clients want to lose weight, even i want to get in better shape, so why do I want to be fitter, stronger and leaner?

Goal: Get in better shape

I want to get in shape because, I want to inspire others to do the same.

I want to inspire others because, I believe it’s important to lead by example.

I want to lead by example because, I have always been lead before by friends/coaches who haven’t had my best interests.

I want to give people the best chance they have to succeed

I want people to get results from working with me and to leave a legacy

I want to be remembered with a legacy because I was a nobody growing up that very few people cared about and was effectively bullied by friends who would run off.

I want to prove to people that I am worth more than that!

These are the reasons why I want to achieve my goals and get into better shape – notice it actually has ZERO to do with being in shape, health or fitness but all to do with emotions and feelings. Once we tap into these feelings and emotions our goals become bigger than excuses and we are able to push through hard times or challenges and continue moving forwards to achieve our goals.

These are very clearly my reasons and my goals. Go through the process and explore your own reasons. I would love to hear your 7 reasons why, but if you feel they’re too personal to share at least you will have the power to commit and continue moving forwards more than any excuse to stop.

Fat Loss supplements are a million-dollar business, however this can be seen as preying on the vulnerable and possible desperation to lose weight.

It can be extremely tempting to jump onto the bandwagon with any media reports suggesting certain fat loss supplements help with results.

However, from our background in sports science we have access to multiple research reports to allow us to make informed decisions.

Here’s a list of the fat loss supplements that we’ve seen people buying in abundance and what the research suggests.

This is not our views but the reports from the scientific research.

Glutamine

Glutamine is one of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids in dietary protein. specifically it is a conditionally essential amino acid (being elevated to essential during periods of disease and muscle wasting typical of physical trauma). It is sold as an isolated amino acids, but is already found in high levels in dietary meats and eggs. It is also found in very high levels in both whey and casein protein.

Glutamine is a very effective intestinal and immune system health compound, as these cells use glutamine as the preferred fuel source rather than glucose.

It is generally touted as a muscle builder, but has not been proven to enhance muscle building in healthy individuals; only those suffering from physical trauma such as burns or muscular wounds (knife wounds) or in disease states in which muscle wasting occurs, such as AIDS. In these individuals, however, glutamine is effective at building muscle and alleviating a decrease in muscle mass typical of the ailment.

Glutamine also seems to make news in fat loss media. Yet research has shown zero link between glutamine and fat loss. If glutamine had an effect on muscle building it could help increase metabolism. However, this would not surpass diet and exercise as the biggest reasons for adding muscle to increase metabolism.

Having amino acids in single form (they’re the building blocks of protein – of which there are 20), often means that nutrients are missed or may not be fully utilised in the body. It would be strongly advised to continue with wholesome meats and fish, and wherever needed in protein powders.

T3

T3 is one of the two circulating Thyroid Hormones and is the more metabolically active one (relative to T4). Used as therapy for hypothyroidics, T3 may hold some promise as being a short-term fat burner and cognitive enhancer vicariously through the effects of thyroid hormones. T3 increased the thyroid activity and therefore may improve metabolism for short term weight loss.

Caution should be taken as overdosing through T3 and/or T4 can lead to symptoms of hyperthyroidism, which range far wider than just an increased metabolic rate.

Caution should be taken to avoid overdosing in both dosage and duration.

A much safe and cheaper option would be diet, exercise and even the use of caffeine as a metabolic enhancer.

Raspberry Ketones

Raspberry ketone is the compound responsible for many flavouring and aromatic qualities of cosmetics and processed foods.

When present in high doses, raspberry ketone can exert fat burning effects on various areas of the fat cell. These effects may be similar to those of ephedrine and synephrine.

It should be noted that all evidence for the effects of raspberry ketone has only been observed in vitro (in a test tube). Though researchers are able to raise the concentrations of ketones in a single cell during studies, these same high dose concentrations cannot be replicated in the human body, particularly through oral supplementation.

Therefore research support for raspberry ketones is severly lacking in human trials. Therefore, it is impossible to say that they will have a benefit due to the concentrations used in test tube labs compared to those that could be ingested.

CLA

It is claimed that CLA reduces appetite and therefore leads to improved weight loss.

However, human studies on CLA are very unreliable and the overall effects seen with CLA are not overly potent as well as sometimes contradicting. CLA’s usage as a supplement for personal goals is quite lacklustre.

CLA is considered ineffective for weight loss to the high degree of unreliability in the results, with most evidence suggesting no effects and some sparse evidence to suggest both increases and decreases.

It may be effective for morbidly obese and sedentary individuals but even then, results are still unreliable and often ineffective.

We believe more needs to be done to promote the disuse of such products that can cause severe side-effects and/or zero effect on your fat loss. We advise you to save your money and ask us or check out www.authoritynutrition.com and/or www.examine.com as two credible sources of evidence based reviews for such supplements.

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